Canadian artist / Sunshine Coast, BC
Ben
Tour.
Painting, illustration and murals shaped by expressive line, dirty colour and the visual language of the street.
01 / Practice
Characters real and imagined surface through kinetic line, quiet ground and bursts of colour. The work moves between intimate drawings, cut wood, clothing and walls built for a city block.
Recent / Instagram
Selected work
Studio film / 01:21
Draw.
Print.
Paint.
Inside the practice: sketchbooks, hand printing, digital drawing, painted boards and public walls on the Sunshine Coast.
Sunshine Coast, British Columbia
About the artist
Observation
meets instinct.
Ben Tour is a Canadian artist and illustrator based on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast.
Tour began drawing as a child, self-published comics in high school and studied at Sheridan College. Editorial illustration, tags, stickers and wheat-pasted work helped establish his visual language before he moved from Toronto to Vancouver in 2002.
His portraits balance detailed observation with distortion: fine lines and white space meet saturated colour, drips and hard geometric cuts. The same energy carries into murals, found objects, clothing and collaborative work.
"I like to spark imaginations. My artist's statement today is: let's have fun!"
Selected history
From paper
to public walls.
Tour's work has appeared in galleries across Canada and the United States, in public-art programs and in commercial collaborations.
First recorded exhibition in Toronto.
Fine artMoves from Toronto to Vancouver.
West CoastIllustration for Bodhi Jones' Bones receives a JUNO nomination for Recording Package of the Year.
IllustrationDire Wolves enters Vancouver's public-art record through the inaugural Vancouver Mural Festival.
Public artSelected to create a mural for Capilano University's Sunshine Coast campus.
MuralIndependent studio practice on the Sunshine Coast, with commissions open.
BC
Original art / Murals / Illustration
Make something
with Ben.
For original work, murals, illustration and collaboration inquiries, contact the studio directly.